[Photo]: Early Aviatrix Harriet Quimby by QUIMBY, Harriet - 1911

New York: Marceau, 1911. Unbound. Very Good. Gelatin silver photograph. Measuring approximately 7" x 9". Embossed at the lower right by the photographer: "Marceu 258 Fifth Avenue New York." Ownership signature and stamp on the back along with contemporary ink note: "Harriet Quimby Killed July 1, 1912 in Dorchester Bay." Light edgewear, toning on the back and remnant from a label, very good. An original photo of Harriet Quimby, the pioneer aviatrix who was the first American woman to fly across the English Channel. Quimby was born in Coldwater, Michigan in 1875 but grew up in San Francisco where she worked as a journalist for the *San Francisco Chronicle*. After covering the 1910 Belmont Park Air Show in Long Island, New York for *Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly*, she became enamored with flying, a few months later becoming the first American woman to get a pilot's license. She flew wearing a distinctive plum-colored flight suit with a stylish hood that convert from a dress into pantaloons. She made a name for herself as the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel on April 16, 1912, but unfortunately her feat was overshadowed at the time by the news of the *Titanic* sinking. Undeterred, she set her sights on breaking the air-speed record at the 1912 Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum Airfield, but on a practice flight over Boston Harbor in her new plane, she and air-show manager William Willard were thrown from the plane and fell to their deaths. Seemingly forgotten, Quimby was honored by the U.S. Post Office for her pioneering efforts with an airmail stamp in 1991. While the central image of Quimby was often reproduced, we could find only one contemporary copy of this photograph, a cropped copy at the Library of Congress. Rare.